By Chris Powell
Because of the First Amendment, anyone in the United States can be a journalist at any time — no training or licensing required. Because of Connecticut’s Freedom of Information Act, everyone has access to state and municipal government proceedings and records, with narrowly defined exceptions, though government officials and employees are always trying to add more.
The citizen journalism facilitated by these rights can be a great thing. It also can be as empty as professional journalism can be.
That’s the lesson of the people who lately have been carrying mobile phone or video cameras into town halls in Connecticut to record municipal employees at work. This has annoyed and disconcerted some of them. Recently at Ridgefield Town Hall an offended employee swatted a videographer with a file folder and was charged with disorderly conduct and placed on administrative leave. But since no real harm was done, the charge was dropped and she returned to work a week later.
As long as they are not otherwise disruptive, the people with the video cameras are within their rights. But they are accomplishing little, since gaining access to municipal government buildings during business hours has not been a problem. Someday an unexpected videographer may catch a government employee sleeping at his desk, but that can happen anywhere.
Apparently in an attempt to make himself seem relevant, a videographer who walked through Town Hall in Sherman the other day eventually went into the town clerk’s office to ask for a list of all Town Hall employees, their job titles, and salaries. That is all public information and probably will be provided quickly enough, but will the videographer discover and publicize anything improper or questionable about the information? That’s not likely. He probably will content himself with whatever annoyance he caused.
But no cameras are necessary to extract from town or state government information whose disclosure may be of great public interest.
For example, instead of asking for a list of town government employees, titles, and salaries, someone might ask for access to all records of employee evaluation, discipline, and reprimand. Such records are useful for evaluating management in government. Even if there were no such records, townspeople might want to know that their local government workforce is perfect, or perfectly unmanaged.
As is suggested by controversies around the country, no one needs a camera to visit a public school superintendent’s office and ask for access to all curriculum materials and school library books. Like the rest of government, public schools often do things they don’t want the public to know about.
Connecticut’s public schools are so insistent about concealing what they do that they have gained an exemption to the freedom-of-information law authorizing them to keep teacher evaluations secret, even as disclosure remains required for evaluations of all other state and municipal government employees.
Public schools in Connecticut are special. That is, not really public.
Even if the objective of the videographers is only to annoy and disconcert government officials, such requests for information would annoy and disconcert those officials far more.
Indeed, that kind of citizen journalism might be superior to some professional journalism still being performed in Connecticut, journalism that is much reduced amid the state’s decline in literacy and civic engagement. Shared with news organizations, such citizen journalism might gain a large audience and thereby bolster government’s incentive to do better.
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HAPPY TO LAG: In its recent election Connecticut repudiated Donald Trump and most candidates associated with his political party, the Republicans, and swept Democrats back into full control of state government.
Yet the U.S. Census Bureau reported the other day that Connecticut had the country’s second-lowest population growth in 2022, an increase of only 2,800 people, or 0.08%, leading only Vermont, another Democratic state, whose population rose by just a tenth of a percent. Meanwhile the nation’s population increased by 0.38%.
Population growth is a measure of a state’s attractiveness. Connecticut seems happy to be a leading laggard.
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Chris Powell (CPowell@JournalInquirer.com) is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Connecticut.
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Chris Powell column 